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But it’s par for the course for newly popular services. Some don’t survive the popularity and some thrive in spite of the degraded service. Signal will figure i

But it’s par for the course for newly popular services. Some don’t survive the popularity and some thrive in spite of the degraded service. Signal will figure it out. All the best to the engineering team at Signal right now!

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>But it’s par for the course for newly popular services. It is, but most consumers don't care, they just what their stuff to work 100% of the time as frictionless as possible, and, on top of all things, for free. Otherwise they just run back to the usual free surveilanceware. I've tried and failed to convince some young, highly educated zoomer friends with good incomes to move away from WhatsApp and Facebook and even when I told them "Look, they're basically spying on you" they just brush it off and say "I don't care, it's fun, easy to use and all my friends are already there". Ironically, it was easier to convince my boomer parents to move to Signal and they also understand and agree with the tradeoffs and extra friction for the sake of free privacy but younger people just want to be where their friends are and not feel left out (remember the blue vs green bubble stigma on iMessage).
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Young people are (generally) fans of corporate governance and government overreach. It's older "boomer" types who feel threatened by the new religion of sensitivity and cancel culture who worry about corporate governance and government overreach. Please don't be pedantic on my comment and try to understand the general picture I am painting, you'll find the gist of the comment to be true even if I didn't articulate it super well. Thanks.
- sedev 6y ago
  Using Telegram is a rational decision if you want a service that's good at fun conversations. Signal's value proposition is _secure conversations_ and it does that much better than other services. "Fun" is not part of Signal's value proposition. More people want/need fun conversations than need secure ones. Regardless of what people "should" want, Telegram serves people's mundane everyday needs materially better than Signal does. "It's fun and the people I care about talking to already use it" is a compelling value proposition, not a frivolous one, given people's everyday needs. The more someone cares about security and is willing to trade away other good things for security, the better a platform Signal is — but remember, this also flows the other way.
  - mlindner 6y ago
    Why are there so many Telegram fanboys astroturfing in this thread? This thread has nothing to do with Telegram.
  - didibus 6y ago
    I'm a little confused because you brought up Telegram specifically. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger offer the same level of security as Telegram. In fact, I think WhastApp is more secure since it does E2E encryption by default. It's true that Telegram is about "fun" and not security. I just wasn't sure if you tried to imply Telegram is like Signal with a focus on fun as well, or you just meant most people don't care about security and would rather have fun chats?
    - m12k 6y ago
      Telegram has optional E2E encryption (as does WhatsApp) which puts it ahead of Facebook Messenger. Unlike FB Messenger and WhatsApp, the company behind Telegram so far doesn't have a history of selling your personal data. I'd say it's fairly competitive, though obviously not ahead of Signal
      - eitland 6y ago
        > Telegram has optional E2E encryption (as does WhatsApp) WhatsApp, for all its faults is E2E-encrypted by default and all the time. Not that it helps much unless you avoid activating backups and convince all your contacts to avoid backups. I don't like WhatsApp (anymore), but we should stick to the facts.
        m12k 6y ago
        Thanks for setting the record straight. I actually thought you needed to opt in (was that maybe how it worked when they first added it?) but I'm glad to hear it's always on
      - thekyle 6y ago
        Facebook Messenger also has optional E2E encryption in a feature called Secret Conversations which is very similar to Telegram's Secret Chats. A big difference though is that Facebook uses the Signal protocol while Telegram rolled their own.
- teekert 6y ago
  Actually all the non switchers now see that there are really a lot of switchers. It's even on mainstream news websites here. I see this as a win.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  Loved ones. Especially seniors. Are the easiest to convince You carrot them with a unique way to ping you, over tech no one else has, and they see it like an intimate connection with you I had my elder parents and SO use it for years before friends i consider privacy aware and tech savvy... For years Added benefit: its a lot harder to share memes over a young network with no traffic. I guess that may change now....
  - charsi 6y ago
    Never looked at it this way but 100% true in my case. Got my parents on Signal three years ago and they have been perfectly happy.
- mycall 6y ago
  Did you try to tell them "Ten years from now, your future you might care", as this is really what privacy is about.
eitland 6y ago
One of those annoying Telegram users here. I too wish Signal engineers good luck! (Even if I personally mostly use Telegram and hope for Matrix to "win", Signal is a fantastic piece of software as far as I can see, both as an extremely secure (I think) messaging client in its own right and also as an inspiration for other messaging platforms.)
- didibus 6y ago
  Telegram is not a secure chat application though. It's more similar to Facebook Messenger. You're better off using WhatsApp over it if you care about security. Or obviously Signal. When it comes to Matrix, it's a little trickier. Riot, the most common Matrix client does E2E encryption on DMs and invite only rooms. What I'm not sure is what happens if you send a private message to someone who is using Matrix client that doesn't do E2E. Will it fail to send? Or will it like fallback to not encrypted?
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    It will be sent encrypted, and the receiver will only be able to view it if they are on an encryption-capable Matrix client.
  - eitland 6y ago
    > Telegram is not a secure chat application though. Fun fact: I didn't even write that. The rest is not so much for you personally as for a number Signal fans: I get it, I get it: Signal is best. But seriously: do you Signal fans have to derail every conversation? Do you have to take a jab at every other messenger at every given opportunity? Or can we agree that there's room for more than one solution? Because physical mail, email, irc, Telegram etc are probably going to stay around for a long time, at least until Signal solves: - large groups - backups - grows a stable messaging API - creates a Bot api - and starts teleporting physical goods - etc Until Signal solves all this we are going to have to deal with other mesaging solutions. Deal with it. Seriously. Yes: Signal is probably the most secure now IMO. No: talking down other messengers doesn't make it better. @dang: apologies in advance. I've tried hard to keep it polite.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

>But it’s par for the course for newly popular services. It is, but most consumers don't care, they just what their stuff to work 100% of the time as frictionless as possible, and, on top of all things, for free. Otherwise they just run back to the usual free surveilanceware. I've tried and failed to convince some young, highly educated zoomer friends with good incomes to move away from WhatsApp and Facebook and even when I told them "Look, they're basically spying on you" they just brush it off and say "I don't care, it's fun, easy to use and all my friends are already there". Ironically, it was easier to convince my boomer parents to move to Signal and they also understand and agree with the tradeoffs and extra friction for the sake of free privacy but younger people just want to be where their friends are and not feel left out (remember the blue vs green bubble stigma on iMessage).

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
Young people are (generally) fans of corporate governance and government overreach. It's older "boomer" types who feel threatened by the new religion of sensitivity and cancel culture who worry about corporate governance and government overreach. Please don't be pedantic on my comment and try to understand the general picture I am painting, you'll find the gist of the comment to be true even if I didn't articulate it super well. Thanks.
sedev 6y ago
Using Telegram is a rational decision if you want a service that's good at fun conversations. Signal's value proposition is _secure conversations_ and it does that much better than other services. "Fun" is not part of Signal's value proposition. More people want/need fun conversations than need secure ones. Regardless of what people "should" want, Telegram serves people's mundane everyday needs materially better than Signal does. "It's fun and the people I care about talking to already use it" is a compelling value proposition, not a frivolous one, given people's everyday needs. The more someone cares about security and is willing to trade away other good things for security, the better a platform Signal is — but remember, this also flows the other way.
- mlindner 6y ago
  Why are there so many Telegram fanboys astroturfing in this thread? This thread has nothing to do with Telegram.
- didibus 6y ago
  I'm a little confused because you brought up Telegram specifically. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger offer the same level of security as Telegram. In fact, I think WhastApp is more secure since it does E2E encryption by default. It's true that Telegram is about "fun" and not security. I just wasn't sure if you tried to imply Telegram is like Signal with a focus on fun as well, or you just meant most people don't care about security and would rather have fun chats?
  - m12k 6y ago
    Telegram has optional E2E encryption (as does WhatsApp) which puts it ahead of Facebook Messenger. Unlike FB Messenger and WhatsApp, the company behind Telegram so far doesn't have a history of selling your personal data. I'd say it's fairly competitive, though obviously not ahead of Signal
    - eitland 6y ago
      > Telegram has optional E2E encryption (as does WhatsApp) WhatsApp, for all its faults is E2E-encrypted by default and all the time. Not that it helps much unless you avoid activating backups and convince all your contacts to avoid backups. I don't like WhatsApp (anymore), but we should stick to the facts.
      - m12k 6y ago
        Thanks for setting the record straight. I actually thought you needed to opt in (was that maybe how it worked when they first added it?) but I'm glad to hear it's always on
    - thekyle 6y ago
      Facebook Messenger also has optional E2E encryption in a feature called Secret Conversations which is very similar to Telegram's Secret Chats. A big difference though is that Facebook uses the Signal protocol while Telegram rolled their own.
teekert 6y ago
Actually all the non switchers now see that there are really a lot of switchers. It's even on mainstream news websites here. I see this as a win.
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
Loved ones. Especially seniors. Are the easiest to convince You carrot them with a unique way to ping you, over tech no one else has, and they see it like an intimate connection with you I had my elder parents and SO use it for years before friends i consider privacy aware and tech savvy... For years Added benefit: its a lot harder to share memes over a young network with no traffic. I guess that may change now....
- charsi 6y ago
  Never looked at it this way but 100% true in my case. Got my parents on Signal three years ago and they have been perfectly happy.
mycall 6y ago
Did you try to tell them "Ten years from now, your future you might care", as this is really what privacy is about.

eitland 6y ago

One of those annoying Telegram users here. I too wish Signal engineers good luck! (Even if I personally mostly use Telegram and hope for Matrix to "win", Signal is a fantastic piece of software as far as I can see, both as an extremely secure (I think) messaging client in its own right and also as an inspiration for other messaging platforms.)

didibus 6y ago
Telegram is not a secure chat application though. It's more similar to Facebook Messenger. You're better off using WhatsApp over it if you care about security. Or obviously Signal. When it comes to Matrix, it's a little trickier. Riot, the most common Matrix client does E2E encryption on DMs and invite only rooms. What I'm not sure is what happens if you send a private message to someone who is using Matrix client that doesn't do E2E. Will it fail to send? Or will it like fallback to not encrypted?
- Arathorn 6y ago
  It will be sent encrypted, and the receiver will only be able to view it if they are on an encryption-capable Matrix client.
- eitland 6y ago
  > Telegram is not a secure chat application though. Fun fact: I didn't even write that. The rest is not so much for you personally as for a number Signal fans: I get it, I get it: Signal is best. But seriously: do you Signal fans have to derail every conversation? Do you have to take a jab at every other messenger at every given opportunity? Or can we agree that there's room for more than one solution? Because physical mail, email, irc, Telegram etc are probably going to stay around for a long time, at least until Signal solves: - large groups - backups - grows a stable messaging API - creates a Bot api - and starts teleporting physical goods - etc Until Signal solves all this we are going to have to deal with other mesaging solutions. Deal with it. Seriously. Yes: Signal is probably the most secure now IMO. No: talking down other messengers doesn't make it better. @dang: apologies in advance. I've tried hard to keep it polite.